Page 276 - Week 01 - Thursday, 14 February 2019
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Welcome to the party! Just legalise it, prepared by The Greens.
I ask the question: when it comes to things like harm minimisation—take the issue of cannabis—what is the greater harm? Is it a fine that someone might get as part of the deterrence to try to reduce demand for the consumption of cannabis or is it schizophrenia? That is sadly the case. I think there is much evidence out there from the experts. I quote from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare:
Ongoing and regular use of cannabis is associated with a number of negative long-term effects. Regular users of cannabis can become dependent and commonly reported symptoms of withdrawal include anxiety, sleep difficulties, appetite disturbance and depression
The 2016 national drugs strategy household survey found a significant increase in the proportion of past month and past 12-month cannabis users that reported mental illness and “high to very high levels of psychological distress.” The AMA found that cannabis can cause a fivefold increase in users developing psychosis and that maternal and paternal use can lead to similar risks for unborn children.
A recent study by Duke Health in the US found that THC can alter the genetic structure of a user’s sperm. That is why in its position statement on cannabis use, the AMA supports the current approach and states that the personal recreational use of cannabis should be prohibited. Psychosis does not sound much like a party to me. That is what Mr Rattenbury is pushing out there.
There is significant evidence and serious academic research online. I will seek leave in a moment to table a piece of academic research from a decade ago, from World psychiatry, the official journal of the World Psychiatric Association. I refer to an academic paper titled “Cannabis use and the risk of developing a psychotic disorder.”
I do not have time to go through it in detail now but I will table it because it refers to numerous other studies, one study including over 50,000 people as a longitudinal study and the results from that. When people out there say, “There is no link between cannabis and mental illness,” that is not true. There is evidence. There is longstanding researched evidence that there is a causal link. I seek leave to table that research.
Leave granted.
MR HANSON: I table the following paper:
Cannabis use and the risk of developing a psychotic disorder—Copy of article from World Psychiatry—Official Journal of the World Psychiatric Association.
I will move to the issue of pill testing. Some statistics were provided on what happened at the trial in Canberra. One figure that struck me was that when people had their pill tested and it showed that it was pure, they kept that tablet. Often the tablets that people discarded were those that did not have drugs in them or did not have many drugs in them. But when they found, “Yes, it has a high quantity of MDMA,” up to 97 per cent of people went away and took that tablet.
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